Dying Soap Star's Desperate Call

A Hollyoaks actress dialled 999 as she lay dying to say: "He's stabbed me to death ... my boyfriend, please help me", a court has heard.

Amy Leigh Barnes made the desperate call minutes after Ricardo Morrison, 21, attacked her with a kitchen knife and "left her for dead", Manchester Crown Court was told.

 

The 19-year-old, who was also a part-time model, was found a short time later by her father - who discovered his daughter dying in a pool of blood, Stuart Driver QC, prosecuting, told the court.

 

Morrison is in the dock alongside his mother, Melda Wilks, 49, of Hollyhill Road, Rubery, who is a policewoman in the West Midlands force. She is accused of assisting an offender, her son, by allowing evidence to be destroyed following the killing. Both have pleaded not guilty.

 

Mr Driver, opening the case for the prosecution, said Amy called 999 shortly after 11.30am on November 8 last year from her grandmother's house in Farnworth near Bolton, where the young couple had been staying. He recounted her 999 call, saying: "'I'm dying. He's stabbed me to death. I'm dying. Please help me.'"

 

Mr Driver added: "The operator asked who had stabbed her and she said 'my boyfriend'." Shortly afterwards Morrison abruptly dashed from the dock when the prosecutor began summarising the post mortem findings of the Home Office pathologist who examined Miss Barnes' body.

 

The injuries included a 10cm long slash across her face - a cut going from the right corner of the victim's mouth along her cheek. She also suffered five wounds to her chest and four to her back, several of which penetrated her liver.

 

Following an examination of the size of the knife and the injuries, it seemed the blade had been forced fully into the victim with "severe force" during the attack, Mr Driver said.

 

At this point the defendant, wearing a white shirt, tie, waistcoat and silver stud earring, turned his back and ran towards the cells. The hearing was temporarily adjourned, and the jury left court.

 

Earlier the prosecutor told the court the couple had been together for around a year. Morrison, who denies murder, had moved from his native Birmingham to live with Miss Barnes, first at her mother's house, then to share the spare bedroom at her grandmothers' two-up two-down terraced home in Moss Street in Farnworth.

 

But there were "serious problems" in their relationship, the jury was told. At 1am on the day she was murdered she had sent a text message from her mobile phone to Morrison, saying: "You are out of my life for good," the court heard.

 

Hours later her grandmother left the house for work, leaving the young couple alone in the house. Morrison, it is alleged, then attacked Amy, punching her, spraying an aerosol in her face and then hurting her arm in a door, Mr Driver told the jury. He then left to go into Bolton, locking her in the house.

 

While he was out "angry" text messages resumed between them, the victim calling him a "woman beater" and telling him, "I hate you. It's over. Leave me alone."

 

Miss Barnes, "upset and tearful" then called her mother, who lived across town in another part of Bolton, who was "very worried" about her daughter.

 

With Morrison on his way back to the house, they agreed her father would go to collect a house key from her grandmother and pick her up to bring her to their house. That call ended at 11.33am, when Amy was alive and well, the court heard.

"Then something happened very quickly because, just two minutes later, at 11.35am, she called 999 and said he's stabbed me, my boyfriend," Mr Driver added.

 

"Having got off the bus, he walked the short distance to the house, let himself in, attacked her with the knife and left her for dead. Soon, her father turned up, opened the front door and found his daughter at the bottom of the stairs, a pool of blood beneath her. "You can imagine his reaction, his panic."

Police and paramedics arrived and the victim was rushed to the Royal Bolton Infirmary.
Despite the efforts of medics they could not save her life and she was pronounced dead at 2.40pm.

 

 

© ITN